Directed by: Chris Weitz
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Mélanie Laurent, Nick Kroll
Rated PG-13, 122 minutes
We’re only nine years removed from “Inglourious Basterds,” the alternative history epic in which Quentin Tarantino burned Hitler alive in a movie theater, but despite that movie’s bloodshed and body count, it feels almost innocent now, a relic of an era in which we could still make Nazis the butt of every joke. The Nazis of today have reclaimed some of the status they once held; they march in public, they spew their messages of hate everywhere from the internet to the rock out in front of my high school, and the president himself calls them “very fine people.” As a result, we now have movies like “Operation Finale,” which tries a different tack, suggesting that we will defeat Nazis not by demonizing them as caricatures of evil, but by humanizing them, talking to them, letting them have their say.
The titular operation refers to the mission undertaken by Israeli special agents to track down Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution, who fled to Argentina after World War II. Led by Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac, “Inside Llewyn Davis”), the agents locate Eichmann (Ben Kingsley, “Gandhi”), but that is only half the battle; the team then has to spirit him away to Israel under cover of darkness, an all-but-impossible task given Eichmann’s unwillingness to cooperate.
Malkin eventually wears Eichmann down, though, through a series of heart-to-hearts. Eichmann fears that being extradited to Israel will mean trial in a kangaroo court and certain death, not to mention being scapegoated for the entire Holocaust in the absence of Hitler and Goebbels. When he eventually concedes defeat and allows the agents to take him to Israel, it is because he has come to trust Malkin, who promises him a fair trial and a chance for Eichmann to tell the story however he feels it should be told.
When Eichmann was captured and condemned to death, the author Hannah Arendt wrote of “the banality of evil,” in reference to his ordinary demeanor when confronted with his crimes against humanity. “Operation Finale” relies on this same banality to make its point about humanizing the enemy; we watch Eichmann chewing with his mouth open, asking for a cigarette, sitting on the toilet. As played by Ben Kingsley, Eichmann becomes a peculiar, almost comical figure, behaving more like an uncle shamed by the family for saying racist things at Thanksgiving than a war criminal being brought to justice for organizing the transportation of millions of people to the concentration camps where they were slaughtered.
The idea here is that, if Nazis have a chance to be real people, to tell their side of the story, then they won’t be able to claim they’ve been unfairly represented when they find themselves condemned. To be fair, this is reasonable logic, but only for someone who’s never dealt with anti-Semitism. The problem, of course, is that Nazis don’t give much credence to logic; after all, their entire existence is based on claims of racial superiority. “Operation Finale” clings to this premise, though, effectively denying Jews their anger over the Holocaust, and what closure the film tries to provide in return is meager at best, and insulting at worst. There is no closure from something like the Holocaust, nor should there be.
Worse still, the movie’s self-denial would seem to put the responsibility of avoiding another Holocaust on the Jews, rather than on those who would perpetrate it. No matter how many millions were imprisoned and killed, the film says, it’s up to the survivors to keep a level head moving forward. “Operation Finale” may have a novel take on the Holocaust, but it’s a dangerous step toward thinking of Nazism as just another legitimate point of view in a sea of valid opinions.
Perhaps the movie’s most incisive commentary comes in the form of its title, which reminds us that Eichmann’s capture should have been the end of the line. Of course, nearly 60 years after the events portrayed here, we know that Nazis have kept their hatred alive. It’s not the movie’s fault that Nazis have started coming back out of the woodwork, but its naiveté suggests that we, as a country, are letting the “Never Again” mantra lose its meaning at a time when we desperately need to remember.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 9/14/18.